The self-proclaimed "intermedialist" and pioneer of electronic avant-garde music worked on a marathon performance practice in the early years of his work: in his short-lived but legendary Zodiac Free Arts Lab in Berlin in the late sixties, he led his audience into a whirlwind of sensory experiences: concerts, installations , Videos and performances interacted with events that still conjure a radiance in the eyes of their visitors.
For two days, the poodle will open the doors in the afternoon and transform itself into the night again and again. Sometimes he will be a sound gallery, a concert room, a record shop, of course a club and maybe even a hair salon.

CONTROL

ACADEMY RECORDS

Saturday August 8
Rote Kassette CONcert and cassette release event 6 - 8pm
First 10 people to arrive with a working cassette player will receive a copy of Rote Kassette
Edition of 100, originally self-released by Schnitzler in 1973
12 west 18th Street, NY, NY 10011
www.academy-records.com

SPECTACLE THEATER

The Moving Images of Conrad Schnitzler
Friday August 21, 8pm
Gen Ken Montgomery will host screenings of rare films and video by Conrad Schnitzler.
Look for other screenings of Schnitzler visual work throughout the month at the Spectacle Theater’s website
Spectacle Theater
124 South 3rd Street,
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.spectacletheater.com

STRENGTH THROUGH FAILURE on WFMU

Fabio Roberti will host a special program devoted to Conrad Schnitzler. Date to be announced.
www.WFMU.org

CONTROL

From 1 August – 31 August Control will be presenting Con-Mythology in a special exhibition to honor the life and work of Conrad Schnitzler. The show will illuminate the unique relationship that Conrad Schnitzler had with the physical world, from which he decisively broke in the late 60s. In a stroke of liberation, Schnitzler halted his sculpture practice (studied under Joseph Beuys), and dragged his oblong, metal forms one by one to a field in Dusseldorf, abandoning them there. The fate of the sculpture works, poignant pop-industrial beacons of black & white painted metal rods and planes, is unknown. They were free to be picked over by passersby, or to sink into the earth, detritus of a prolific artist’s creative process. Schnitzler dedicated himself entirely to the exploration of sound from that point on, yet curiously Conrad Schnitzler’s physical presence remained an almost sculptural manifestation. This photographic exhibit will display the only known images of Conrad Schnitzler’s now lost sculptures amid images and footage of the artist himself, to reveal Conrad’s intricate tension between the folds of visuality and aurality.

Opening party: 1 August, 4 - 6pm

Academy Records

Academy Records will honor the work of legendary German electronic music composer Conrad Schnitzler with a free concert on August 8th, conducted by Gen Ken Montgomery, himself a legend of the New York City experimental scene.

Montgomery will conduct "Rote Kassette" ("Red Cassette") using multiple cassette decks, affording a rare opportunity to hear the work in the multi-dimensional manner that Schnitzler had intended. "Rote Kassette" was self-released by Schnitzler in 1973 and is being reissued in its original format for the first time. The public is invited to bring working cassette players to the performance, with the first ten to do so receiving complimentary copies of the tape.

Schnitzler (1937-2011) best known for his participation in two seminal Krautrock groups, Tangerine Dream and Kluster, was a multifaceted artist who worked in painting, sculpture and film in addition to his prolific output as a composer.

Gen Ken Montgomery was a friend and collaborator of Schnitzler, whose enthusiam and creativity inspired Montgomery in the late 1980s to open Generator, a studio/performance space/gallery in lower Manhattan that promoted the DIY cassette culture of the period. "Generator would not have existed without Conrad's lighting the fire," says Montgomery. "Rote Kassette" is the ninth and newest release on Montgomery's recently revived cassette label, Generations Unlimited.

Spectacle Theater

Spectacle is pleased to host a series of screenings celebrating the life and work of electronic music and avant-garde legend Conrad Schnitzler. Schnitzler (1937-2011) came to popularity as a founding member of Tangerine Dream and Kluster, and went on to an influential and prolific career of unmistakably personal intermedia artistry. The programs are organized in collaboration with artist “GenKen” Ken Montgomery, friend and collaborator of Schnitzler, and founder of Generator, NYC’s “first sound art gallery.”

CONRAD SCHNITZLER: CON-MYTHOLOGY/Moving Image

MARCH 6- 31, 2015. Philadelphia, PA

Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011) is legendary in the German electronic and avant-garde music scene as a founding member of Tangerine Dream and of Kluster.
Though mostly known as a composer, his intermedia his video work from the 60s, 70s and 80s is far less known.
At Vox Populi we are given a rare opportunity witness Schnitzler’s work with moving images as well as some rare photographs
of his sculptural work in metal.

Schnitzler studied sculpture with Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, exhibited his black and white metal
sculptures in Berlin, and participated in performances and "happenings" in the same circles as many Fluxus artists, although
he rejected being a part of any group or movement. In the early 70s Schnitzler left all of his sculptures in an open field,
abandoned the art world and began to devote himself to composing music. His continual and prolific self produced electronic
music gained an international cult following. Schnitzler’s immense creative energy could not be limited to one medium.
He continuously experimented with moving images to accompany his music by painting and scratching directly on 8mm film,
shooting stop-motion animations and designing sets in which he filmed himself performing. By the 80s Schnitzler had become
increasingly reclusive, shooting long meditative videos accompanied by his distinctive electronic musical scores.

This program of moving images accompanied by Schnitzler’s vintage electronic soundtracks are selected from a vast video
archive, most of which has never been seen publicly before. CON-MYTHOLOGY/Moving Image has been curated by Conrad’s friend
and collaborator “Gen” Ken Montgomery in co-operation with Fourth Wall's guest curatorial fellows, Mike and Linda Aubry Bullock.

In celebration of the event, Conrad Schnitzler's videos will be projected at the MoMA PS1 Print Shop from 12-6pm, Saturdays and Sundays from December 6th-December 21st. We are screening many of Schnitzler's video works from the 70s and 80s that have never been seen in the U.S. before.

Generator at Print Shop presents a unique opportunity to hear Schnitzler’s compositions the way he intended them to be heard: the audience will be surrounded by 8 speakers, immersed in the physicality of CON's sounds, adding new depths to their appreciation of this pioneer of the German electronic music scene.

On Saturday December 6 only, Gen Ken Montgomery will conduct a live Cassette CONcert, a boxed set of cassettes that Schnitzler composed with the intent that others could perform and listen to his CONcerts without him present.
Conrad Schnitzler's Cassette Concert is an Octophonic Listening Experience!

Saturday, December 6th at 8pm
Hear Schnitzler compositions as he wanted you to hear them!

Generator is the brainchild of New York based artist Gen Ken Montgomery. Known as "New York's first sound art gallery", Generator existed in the East Village and then Chelsea from 1989-1992. Content (cassettes, records, art, lamination, etc) from the original Generator will exist in Audio Visual Arts over the course of the this show. Gen Ken Montgomery will be holding down the shop each Saturday and Sunday through September 1. Content will be available for purchase, performances will take place, sounds will be heard.

"I first heard about Generator around late 1989 sometime from our then music director at WFMU radio (I have been a dj there since 1986). Down in the East Village was this little shop where, apparently this guy was putting on shows by some way off-the-grid artists — both visual and/or audio. It was a "sound" gallery — probably the first of its kind in New York. Certainly the first any of us had ever seen or heard of. I was incredulous. I went to check it out, and sure enough, there it was. As soon as I stepped into the tiny storefront, I felt that I was in a place I understood and felt comfortable in. I didn't know Ken at all at that time, but I immediately felt an ease of communication and understanding that told me this was a special place. His idea was to have a "sound" gallery where artists could come and perform or show their work. It would also function as a record shop (I suppose to pay the bills), but he would only sell "underground" cassettes, vinyl, and CDs by artists that had a clear experimental or outsider bent. There wasn't much else (except for the odd lamination!). It must be pointed out that there was no bottomless sonic soup like the internet at that time to go to for a fix of unusual sound explorations. Today it's like a faucet, just turn it on. Today "sound-art" is a hot topic and is featured in many galleries and museums around the world, and much is made of this under-appreciated form that has been around for decades. But in 1989, the internet was still nascent, there weren't even browsers; there were no places that existed at this time that specifically featured sound-art and audio installations and the like. So a place like Generator was a unique experience for anyone looking for something off the beaten track as it were…" -Fabio Roberti

2013 CONtinuation

CONRAD SCHNITZLER CONcert performed by

WOLFGANG SEIDEL & GEN KEN MONTGOMERY

Wolfgang Seidel (Berlin) and Gen Ken Montgomery (New York) come together to pay tribute to the late, great Berlin composer and life artist, Conrad Schnitzler. Seidel and Montgomery have collaborated with Schnitzler for decades performing his Cassette Concerts in galleries and concert halls both in Europe and the USA.

At Ausland Seidel and Montgomery will create a sonic landscape improvising on vintage electronic gear to prepare the audience for a Cassette Concert by Conrad Schnitzler. A Cassette Concert consists of a group of recorded cassettes or CDs containing single tracks of a larger composition, intended for live performances. When these groups of cassettes or CDs are played simultaneously, the combined sounds constitute the basic, although variable, form of the composition. The number of simultaneously played parts is also variable--from two in its simplest form, to any number physically possible or needed. They are recorded in stereo, so for optimal listening each cassette should have its own amplification system, with the speakers placed at opposite ends of the space.

CONtinuation will be a live mix of original electronic sounds from Conrad Schnitzler's definitive and amazing oeuvre.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF CONRAD SCHNITZLER

JULY 24 – JULY 30, 2012 in NEW YORK CITY

60 hours of continuous music composed by Conrad Schnitzler streaming live from this since 6 pm Eastern Standard Time on July 27, 2012

Starting at 6pm on July 27th, AVA will transmit 60 continuous hours of Conrad Schnitzler's musical compositions from 1970 – 2011 (no content will be repeated). The transmission will be presented through speakers on the outside of the gallery, non-stop throughout the entire weekend, ending at 6am on Monday July 29th.

Additionally, a selection of vocal works by Schnitzler will be presented in the Silver Sound Box just west of the AVA on 34 East 1st Street, New York City

CON-MYTHOLOGY : CONceived and organized by Gen Ken Montgomery with assistance and support from: Wolfgang Seidel, Jin Kawai, Frank Rothkamm, Chris Penalosa, Andrew Lambert, Justin Luke, Carol Parkinson, David Weinstein, William Berger, Fabio Roberti, Bryce, Gillie Schnitzler and all friends and family of CON. And especially to CONrad whose music and life CONtinues to inspire and entertain…